We catch up with the Blitz Games co-founder to talk about the studio’s first-ever stereoscopic game

What sort of TV does Invincible Tiger 3D require?
The TVs are new high-end 120Hz plasma screens - how traditional are they? They’re not widely available, although this TV [points to Invincible Tiger demo] is available on the high street. This Samsung plasma is, I believe, the only [stereoscopic] TV you can buy ‘by accident’ in this country. What all TV companies have just started to do is put [3D] in as a feature and they’re not promoting it because there’s no 3D content yet. They worked out they could do it and the movies are going to come soon. These were on sale a year ago in America and they sold about 2 million – we think there’s a bit of a market there, but it’s a market that’s going to blow wide open as soon as films come out. If your TV can do 3D, why not games?

What spurred your interest in doing stereoscopic games?
People said it was impossible and that’s the reason we did some tests a year or so ago, and found that we could do it – but it was a bit tough. We went around publishers saying ‘hey you’ve got a 3D movie do you want a 3D game?’ and people said ‘what, there’s no such thing, it’ll never work’. So we went ahead to prove we could do it. We had demos but nobody really believed we could do a full game. So we’ve done one - Invincible Tiger will be on XBL and PSN in August.

Tell us more about the game…
I appreciate only one or two per cent of the people that get this will be able to play it in true 3D, but it’s a really good game in it’s own right. It’s not just a technology demo, yes we are show it to push the technology, but we’re a games maker, we want to make something playable. We also want to open people’s eyes to this new, cool technology. And we want to be seen as cutting edge – we’re licensing our own engine, and we want to make the point that it’s more powerful than anyone else’s on the market.

Presumably you can play it in 2D?
You can turn [the 3D] on and off. There’s all sorts of confusion in the 3D marketplace. One of the problems is that there’s no standard format for transmitting 3D pictures. So no one has worked out how you’re going to get it from your Sky box or Freeview, whether it’s going to be on Blu-ray. They haven’t worked out the format, but Samsung and Mitsubishi have started producing TVs with their own formats, as well as other companies. At the moment we stand at about six different 3D formats – but as software writers, we’ve just written different drivers [for each] underneath, so you just go into a 3D selection mode and choose which TV you’ve got. We cover all the 3D TVs and monitors out at the moment, but as soon as new ones come out they’ll probably use another different bloody format! We’ll just patch the game and try and keep up with it.

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